Jeremy Munday
Harvard University
Note different date
Monday, February 11, 2008
2:00 pm in SPL 52
Attractive and repulsive Casimir forces in fluid
Abstract: The Casimir force, which arises from the confinement of quantum fluctuations of the electromagnetic fields, is a truly macroscopic manifestation of quantum mechanics. The boundary conditions on these fields are dependent upon the electromagnetic properties of the interacting materials and affect both the magnitude and sign of the resulting force. While precision experiments have been performed between metal surfaces in vacuum, little work has been done between metalized objects in fluids, dielectric objects, or optically anisotropic materials. For materials with suitably chosen dielectric response functions, repulsive forces and/or toques can arise. We will discuss experiments to detect these phenomena along with the technological implications of such experiments.